1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical disk recording apparatus capable of forming a visible image in addition to recording data on an optical disk.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, there are provided optical disk recording apparatuses capable of forming visible images, such as characters and patterns, in addition to conventional data recording, such as audio data recording, on a CD-R (Compact Disc-Recordable) or the like. This type of optical disk recording apparatus is adapted to apply a laser beam to a region where no data has been recorded so as to thermally discolor a part of the non-recorded region for forming characters, patterns or other visible images (refer to, for example, non-patent literature 1).
The non-patent document 1 is Yamaha Corporation Official website “DiscT@2” for CD-R/R products, [online], Aug. 2, 2002, Yamaha Corporation, [searched on Oct. 11, 2002], Internet URL:http://www.yamaha.co.jp/product/computer/handbook/discta2.html
However, in the optical disk recording apparatus, data to be processed for recording the data has been EFM-modulated and the format or the like thereof has been significantly different from that of image data to be processed for forming a visible image. For this reason, it has been necessary to provide the optical disk recording apparatus with a signal processing circuit used for recording data and another signal processing circuit used for forming visible images, separately from each other. This has been posing a problem in which the circuit scale of the apparatus becomes inevitably large, and a new LSI design or a considerable modification in a control program is inconveniently required.